Far more interesting than the support for same-sex “marriage,” however, is the way the poll reveals the real intent behind its creation: to create a narrative, not actually get the public’s opinion on the matters referenced in the poll.

First, the poll asks what people think about giving “gays and lesbians the legal right to marry.” This is the wrong question for three reasons:

A. Homosexuals cannot “marry” each other. Marriage is between heterosexuals. A secular government cannot change what “marriage” is, no matter how much it may want to.

B. Gay and lesbian Americans already have the legal right to marry. They can marry someone of the opposite sex.

C. Lastly, the poll should be asking what people think about gay and lesbian American couples having the right to participate in a marriage-like ceremony. Again, homosexuals can already legally marry.

Second, the poll asks if respondants “think businesses should or should not be allowed to refuse service to gays and lesbians”? Again, this is the wrong question. Businesses – or, rather, their owners – are not refusing to serve homosexuals. They are refusing to participate in helping homosexuals commit sin.

Jonathan and Elaine Huguenin lost a case before the New Mexico Supreme Court, and have now appealed the ruling. As noted in their petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Huguenins’ photography business does serve gay and lesbian clients, just not same-sex weddings. Insofar as a photographer can distinguish between discriminating against a class of client and a type of event—there is, perhaps, a limit—their business does so: “The Huguenins gladly serve gays and lesbians—by, for example, providing them with portrait photography—whenever doing so would not require them to create expression conveying messages that conflict with their religious beliefs.”

The photography business has also turned down clients other than gay and lesbian couples while citing religious objections. “They have declined requests for nude maternity pictures,” their petition states, “and photographs portraying violence.”

Finally, it isn’t just same-sex weddings they’d be uncomfortable photographing: their petition states that they’d also refuse business capturing a polygamous marriage.

A restaurant owner who provides a meal to a homosexual is not helping that person commit sin, and in fact by not serving that person would probably do more harm than good to the cause of evangelization. Similarly, a doctor who saves the life of a gay person is not an accomplice to that person’s immoral actions later on in life, in the same way that doctor is not responsible for the immoral sexual activities of a heterosexual person who sleeps around.

However, a Catholic restaurant owner who provides a wedding reception for a homosexual couple would be participating in sin.

The poll also asks the following:

Do you think businesses should or should not be allowed to refuse service to gays and lesbians? (If should NOT,) What if the business says homosexuality violates their owners’ religious beliefs?

In American culture, “homosexuality” generally means someone has homosexual attractions (though many theologians and other intellectuals in religious circles would define “homosexual” as an act, not a person). Business owners aren’t asking people for their gay identification cards, or putting up gaydars on their front doors. Even the allegedly hateful Catholic Church distinctly separates homosexual attractions from homosexual acts.

It is the acts that are the issue, not the attractions, when it comes to service – something both ABC and the Post know, but choose to ignore in order to get the results they want.

Interestingly, the Post/ABC poll comes less than a month after the Public Religion Research Institute published a survey of 4,500 adults about various religious issues. While 53 percent of respondents supported same-sex “marriage,” 51 percent believe “sex between two adults of the same gender” is immoral. (54 percent of respondants said abortion is morally wrong, and 65 percent believe pornography is morally wrong. So maybe there’s hope for American culture, after all.)

I’ll pull an Allahpundit and ask two exit questions: First, will the same people up in arms over Arizona Senate Bill 1062 (which is a surprisingly short read, and unsurprisingly is not “anti-gay”) be as angry if an unmarried heterosexual couple is turned down by an inn owner because they want one room, not two? And where’s the public flaying of the gay hairdresser who refused to serve the governor of New Mexico because of the latter’s opposition to same-sex “marriage”?

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But not what its citizens or legislatures want to define it as…it is the judicial branch and the Dept. of Justice’s push to redefine what should be a state legislative issue. what the Constitution says it should be.

cptacek on March 7, 2014 at 11:33 AM

FIFY

alchemist19 on March 7, 2014 at 1:01 PM

You reject the 1st Amendment protections regarding religious liberty but expect to make hay out of this argument?

It is true that there is no discrimination against gay individuals where there are laws and constitutional amendments that protect marriage.

There is no discrimination in the places there is discrimination? I’m not quite sure what to make of that.

There IS discrimination against gay couples, but our constitution and system of laws was designed to protect individuals; NOT groups.

Individuals don’t lose their freedom when they form a corporation, or so said the Court.

So when segregation laws are being struck down they’re protecting individual black people and not the group and we won’t stand for that, but when a lesbian can’t marry her female partner that’s discrimination against a group and not that individual so that’s okay. I have to admit that’s something of a novel legal philosophy you’ve got there. It doesn’t make a bit of sense and doesn’t seem all that consistent but since these threads are normally packed with people pulling out the same old discredited arguments I have to admit it’s kind of refreshing to see something new for a change.

If you want a group rights system, you want collectivism*, which is bad because it leads to totalitarianism.

*Granted, most societies (even ours) have this to some degree or another, but the greater the amount, the less overall liberty there is.

[Chicago Alderman] Proco “Joe” Moreno announced this week that he will block Chick-fil-A’s effort to build its second Chicago store … following company President Dan Cathy’s remarks last week that he was “guilty as charged” for supporting the biblical definition of marriage as between a man and woman….

The alderman has the ideological support of Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

“Chick-fil-A values are not Chicago values,” the mayor said in a statement when asked about Moreno’s decision. “They disrespect our fellow neighbors and residents. This would be a bad investment, since it would be empty.”

A House committee investigating the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of right-leaning groups has identified the IRS agent who leaked the confidential donor list of the National Organization for Marriage, a conservative organization that opposes gay marriage. NOM’s donor list, contained in a Form 990 Schedule B, which it is required by law to file with the IRS, was obtained in March 2012 by its chief political opponent, the Human Rights Campaign, and subsequently became the subject of several national news stories that centered on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s donation to the group.

The Supreme Court ruled in the landmark 1958 case National Association for the Advancement of Colored People v. Alabama that organizations like NOM have the right to keep their membership and donor lists private. Alabama, after seeking to banish the NAACP from the state, demanded a list of the group’s members, including their names and addresses. The Court ruled that forcing private groups to disclose that information interfered with their ability to “pursue their lawful private interests privately and to associate feely with others” and violated the Fourteenth Amendment. “It may induce members to withdraw from the Association and dissuade others from joining it because of fear of exposure of their beliefs shown through their associations and of the consequences of this exposure,” wrote Justice John Marshall Harlan.

So what is clear is that gay-sex marriage and the results of it are detrimental to religious believers, infringe on and deny the free exercise of religion, and also infringe on and deny the right of free speech.

And that is because gay-sex marriage is all about antireligious bigotry. Why not be honest, alchemist19, and admit that you are an antireligious bigot? No one is fooled that you actually care about gay people, especially after your screaming rant that gay people who don’t agree with you are mentally ill.

There are 10 pages of that here. You haven’t disputed that you think the 1st Amendment religious protections should go no matter what the reason.

cptacek on March 7, 2014 at 4:57 PM

This all started when someone wanted protections from ever having to violate their conscience and that’s just not the way the First Amendment has ever been interpreted.

The First Amendment forbids the government from prohibiting the free exercise of religion, which is generally understood to mean the government can’t mandate or ban any particular set of beliefs. To borrow a phrase, and I’m paraphrasing a bit because I don’t have the original text in front of me, the government can’t forbid you from kneeling before a golden calf.

A ban on businesses like bakeries or florists or anyone else discriminating against homosexuals isn’t aimed strictly at religious people; it would be characterized as a neutral law of general applicability, and religious conscience does not give a person license to violate a law like that. “To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself.” Those are the words of noted anti-religious bigot Antonin Scalia.

As to RFRA, it was passed in 1993 and struck down as applied to state and local governments in 1997 in City of Boerne v. Flores. It still applies to the feds though.

alchemist’s cluelessness about theocracy is on record. He used an incorrect definition. Then, when others started making fun of him for wanting his own theocracy (his own theocracy according to his own definition), he suddenly started telling other people that they didn’t know what a theocracy is.

alchemist = clown

blink on March 7, 2014 at 12:18 PM

I’ve explained to alchemist19u multiple times what a theocracy is, as have others. If he/she/it wills to be ignorant, so be it.

alchemist19 defines theocracy like it defines marriage — to suit itself. It’s useful to throw the word around at people you disagree with, so he ignores the fact that it doesn’t mean what he wants it to mean.

And what makes him a troll is the fact that he refused to admit this – even though he knows he’s doing this. He actually thinks he’s being clever by making arguments using his own personal definitions for everything.

I’ve explained to alchemist19u multiple times what a theocracy is, as have others. If he/she/it wills to be ignorant, so be it.

alchemist19 defines theocracy like it defines marriage — to suit itself. It’s useful to throw the word around at people you disagree with, so he ignores the fact that it doesn’t mean what he wants it to mean.

IOW, alchemist == clown. Just like you said.

But a fascist clown.

There Goes the Neighborhood on March 7, 2014 at 6:37 PM

You were accusing someone who is not a theist of supporting theocracy. It’s a contradiction in terms. And it speaks to the fact that “theocracy” is a charge you are sensitive to. I believe I’ve struck a nerve.

Based on your struggles with the term “theocracy” I’m not surprised you also don’t understand what fascism is. I’m actually looking forward to you calling me a Nazi after the next state amendment gets struck down.

Any luck turning up the evidence to back up your claim that all the science to date indicating same-sex parents do as well as opposite-sex parents are all “badly-done”? With Marks’s criticisms laid to bed I want to see if you can do any thinking and analysis for yourself now that you don’t have anyone to parrot anymore.

I’ve explained to alchemist19 multiple times what a theocracy is, as have others. If he/she/it wills to be ignorant, so be it.

alchemist19 defines theocracy like it defines marriage — to suit itself. It’s useful to throw the word around at people you disagree with, so he ignores the fact that it doesn’t mean what he wants it to mean.

IOW, alchemist == clown. Just like you said.

But a fascist clown.

There Goes the Neighborhood on March 7, 2014 at 6:37 PM

You were accusing someone who is not a theist of supporting theocracy. It’s a contradiction in terms. And it speaks to the fact that “theocracy” is a charge you are sensitive to. I believe I’ve struck a nerve.

Based on your struggles with the term “theocracy” I’m not surprised you also don’t understand what fascism is. I’m actually looking forward to you calling me a Nazi after the next state amendment gets struck down.

Any luck turning up the evidence to back up your claim that all the science to date indicating same-sex parents do as well as opposite-sex parents are all “badly-done”? With Marks’s criticisms laid to bed I want to see if you can do any thinking and analysis for yourself now that you don’t have anyone to parrot anymore.

alchemist19 on March 7, 2014 at 8:38 PM

No, I’m pointing out that you don’t know what theocracy is. Still true. You’re doubling down on the stupid because you think you struck a nerve. I’m actually amused by it all.

It’s interesting how the people who are always whining about some theocracy that’s just around the corner are the same ones that insist the state has the right to tell everyone else what marriage means.

Totalitarianism. Even something as mild as a Christian baker declining to bake a wedding cake for a homosexual ceremony is unacceptable to you.

You want that world where a Christian can be fined or imprisoned for saying homosexuality is sinful.

You want that world where a Catholic organization helping people adopt has to either help place children with homosexual couples or shut down. Because they’re not allowed to have their own opinion of what’s best for children.

And, of course, you want that world where the favored victim group has more rights than everyone else.

When a Christian baker declines to bake a cake for a homosexual wedding, most people would tell the customer, “there are other bakeries.” You would reject the baker’s rights in favor of the homosexual’s rights not to be offended.

.
You don’t know what theocracy is so I shouldn’t be surprised that you don’t know what totalitarianism is either.

alchemist19 on March 7, 2014 at 12:00 PM

.
I do . . . . . and rejecting the acceptance of SSM on the basis of the Bible’s definitions of ‘moral’ vs ‘immoral’ ain’t it.
.

I said civil marriage. CIVIL.

alchemist19 on March 7, 2014 at 12:00 PM

.
No … government does NOT get to ‘institute’ another type of “marriage”, different from what has been, since the beginning of time.

No government ever originated the idea of “marriage”.
.

Civil marriage has always been whatever the government says it is and you’ve not complained a bit.

alchemist19 on March 7, 2014 at 12:00 PM

.
Up till now the government has not been in defiance of the Biblical definition of marriage . . . . . why should we have complained before now ?
.

Now when government defined-civil marriage is poised to be something you might not like you’re about to have a cow. Religious marriage is not controlled by the government and will not be after this issue is resolved. I’ve always thought you were the kind of person who was intelligent enough to recognize the difference between religious marriage and civil marriage . . . . .

alchemist19 on March 7, 2014 at 12:00 PM

.
At what point in world history did some society (ANY society), somewhere, institute this “civil marriage” you speak of ?

Homosexuality will never be accepted by society at large as a valid, legitimate, alternate state of ‘normal’ . . . . . period.

We are NOT going to concede to allowing government to mandate otherwise, whether in the context of “marriage” or anything else.
.

. . . . . so I’m left to conclude you’re deliberately trying to scare people. Why would you do that?

alchemist19 on March 7, 2014 at 12:00 PM

.
It’s either because we like “mongering” fear, or because your ‘perceptions’ are telling you that we do . . . . . your call.
.

No, I’m pointing out that you don’t know what theocracy is. Still true. You’re doubling down on the stupid because you think you struck a nerve. I’m actually amused by it all.

It’s interesting how the people who are always whining about some theocracy that’s just around the corner are the same ones that insist the state has the right to tell everyone else what marriage means.

Let’s play your game for a bit. What type of government is it if we ignore the accepted highest law of the land, that being the United States Constitution and do something contrary to its plain text on the basis of an interpretation of religious teachings?

Totalitarianism. Even something as mild as a Christian baker declining to bake a wedding cake for a homosexual ceremony is unacceptable to you.

It’s unacceptable to me that some religious people would get their own set of laws that are different than the ones the rest of us have to follow. I’m fine with a Christian or Muslim or Jewish or whatever faith you want to name declining to provide their services for any couple for any reason they like so long as it’s done on the general principles of freedom and association but that’s not what the laws about religious conscience are seeking.

You want that world where a Christian can be fined or imprisoned for saying homosexuality is sinful.

Lies.

You want that world where a Catholic organization helping people adopt has to either help place children with homosexual couples or shut down. Because they’re not allowed to have their own opinion of what’s best for children.

The Catholic organizations you’re making reference to shut down by their own accord. They were getting either a tax credit or a tax exemption for their services on the condition they follow the law and not discriminate when they placed children for adoption. They violated their agreement and were given the choice to either follow the law or give up the favorable tax structure they were enjoying. They chose the latter and opted to go so far as to shut down the whole service. They didn’t have to but they did. You’ll have to ask them why.

And, of course, you want that world where the favored victim group has more rights than everyone else.

This coming from someone who wants to deny homosexuals access to civil marriage is rich.

When a Christian baker declines to bake a cake for a homosexual wedding, most people would tell the customer, “there are other bakeries.” You would reject the baker’s rights in favor of the homosexual’s rights not to be offended.

There Goes the Neighborhood on March 7, 2014 at 9:41 PM

Wrong again. If you’ve read my posts in the past you would have seen I’ve offered a solution that should get the baker out of the situation, avoid running afoul of the anti-discrimination laws that are on the books and will deeply offend the homosexual(s) in question. But you’ve got some mischaracterizing to do and who am I to get in the way of that?

You’re usually pretty good at responding to me, sometimes even going line-by-line, so it’s curious that you’re so silent on the rebuttal of Loren Marks and my call for you to support your bold assertion that the whole body of scientific inquiry that shows children fair equally as well raised by same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples is all “badly-done”. Have the searches you’ve done looking for a new point to parrot been as frantic as they were fruitless? Should I take your silence as a concession of the point on that issue, and a tacit admission that you’ve been wrong all along?

It’s interesting how the people who are always whining about some theocracy that’s just around the corner are the same ones that insist the state has the right to tell everyone else what marriage means.

There Goes the Neighborhood on March 7, 2014 at 9:41 PM

Yup. alchemist is the biggest hypocrite on here. He fully WANTS to use the power of government to force HIS moral standards on everyone else.

Accusing him of wanting his own theocracy is just as appropriate as the accusations he makes about others.

Then he’s forced to play stupid instead of acknowledging his hypocrisy.

What type of government is it if we ignore the accepted highest law of the land, that being the United States Constitution and do something contrary to its plain text on the basis of an interpretation of religious teachings?

alchemist19 on March 8, 2014 at 1:17 PM

Nobody has asked for that any more than you have, alchemist. You’re not asking for the constitution to be interpreted according to the letter. You want the constitution to be interpreted according to YOUR own moral standards.

But this isn’t going to prevent you to keep writing the same lies over and over and over.

They violated their agreement and were given the choice to either follow the law or give up the favorable tax structure they were enjoying. They chose the latter and opted to go so far as to shut down the whole service.

alchemist19 on March 8, 2014 at 1:17 PM

You, idiot. Not-for-profits don’t pay income taxes. What other taxes were they going to start having to pay?

And, of course, you want that world where the favored victim group has more rights than everyone else.

This coming from someone who wants to deny homosexuals access to civil marriage is rich.

alchemist19 on March 8, 2014 at 1:17 PM

This charge against you is valid, alchemist. You’re a bigot. You want to give rights to your favored groups rather than give the same rights to everyone. Then, to justify your bigotry, you invent silly reasons to claim that your discrimination is valid.